This page intentionally left blank Lexical Meaning The ideal introduction for students of semantics, Lexical Meaning fills the gap left by more general semantics textbooks, providing the teacher and the student with insights into word meaning beyond the traditional overviews of lexical relations. The book explores the relationship between word meanings and syntax and semantics more generally. It provides a balanced overview of major theoretical approaches, along with a lucid explanation of their relative strengths and weaknesses. After covering the main topics in lexical meaning, such as polysemy and sense relations, the textbook surveys the types of meanings represented by different word classes. It explains abstract concepts in clear language, using a wide range of examples, and includes linguistic puzzles in each chapter to encourage the student to practice using the concepts. “Adopt-a-word” exercises give students the chance to research a particular word, building a portfolio of specialist work on a single word. m. lynne murphy is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics in the School of English at the University of Sussex. CAMBRIDGE TEXTBOOKS IN LINGUISTICS General editors: p. austin, j. bresnan, b. comrie, s. crain, w. dressler, c. ewen, r. lass, d. lightfoot, k. rice, i. roberts, s. romaine, n. v. smith. Lexical Meaning In this series: a. radford Transformational Syntax l. bauer English Word-Formation s. c. levinson Pragmatics g. brown and g. yule Discourse Analysis r. huddleston Introduction to the Grammar of English r. lass Phonology b. comrie Tense w. klein Second Language Acquisition a. j. woods, p. fletcher and a. hughes Statistics in Language Studies d. a. cruse Lexical Semantics a. radford Transformational Grammar m. garman Psycholinguistics g. g. corbett Gender h. j. giegerich English Phonology r. cann Formal Semantics j. laver Principles of Phonetics f. r. palmer Grammatical Roles and Relations m. a. jones Foundations of French Syntax a. radford Syntactic Theory and the Structure of English: A Minimalist Approach r. d. van valin, jr, and r. j. lapolla Syntax: Structure, Meaning and Function a. duranti Linguistic Anthropology a. cruttenden Intonation Second edition j. k. chambers and p. trudgill Dialectology Second edition c. lyons Definiteness r. kager Optimality Theory j. a. holm An Introduction to Pidgins and Creoles g. g. corbett Number c. j. ewen and h. van der hulst The Phonological Structure of Words f. r. palmer Mood and Modality Second edition b. j. blake Case Second edition e. gussman Phonology: Analysis and Theory m. yip Tone w. croft Typology and Universals Second edition f. coulmas Writing Systems: An Introduction to their Linguistic Analysis p. j. hopper and e. c. traugott Grammaticalization Second edition l. white Second Language Acquisition and Universal Grammar i. plag Word-Formation in English w. croft and a. cruse Cognitive Linguistics a. siewierska Person a. radford Minimalist Syntax: Exploring the Structure of English d. buring¨ Binding Theory m. butt Theories of Case n. hornstein, j. nunes˜ and k. grohmann Understanding Minimalism b. c. lust Child Language: Acquisition and Growth g. g. corbett Agreement j. c. l. ingram Neurolinguistics: An Introduction to Spoken Language Processing and its Disorders j. clackson Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction m. ariel Pragmatics and Grammar r. cann, r. kempson and e. gregoromichelaki Semantics: An Introduction to Meaning in Language y. matras Language Contact d. biber and s. conrad Register, Genre and Style l. jeffries and d. mcintyre Stylistics r. hudson An Introduction to Word Grammar m. l. murphy Lexical Meaning Lexical Meaning M. LYNNE MURPHY University of Sussex cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao˜ Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521677646 C M. Lynne Murphy 2010 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2010 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Murphy, M. Lynne. Lexical meaning / M. Lynne Murphy. p. cm. – (Cambridge textbooks in linguistics) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-521-86031-4 (hardback) – ISBN 978-0-521-67764-6 (paperback) 1. Semantics. 2. Lexicology. I. Title. II. Series. P325.M824 2010 401.43 – dc22 2010024388 ISBN 978-0-521-86031-4 Hardback ISBN 978-0-521-67764-6 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. for Phil Contents List of figures page xii Preface: using this book xiii Acknowledgments xvi Typographical conventions xvii Part I Meaning and the lexicon1 1 The lexicon – some preliminaries 3 1.1 Overview 3 1.2 What is a lexicon? 3 1.3 What is a word? 11 1.4 How to research words and their meanings 18 1.5 Structure of this book 24 1.6 Further reading 24 1.7 Answers to puzzles 25 1.8 Exercises 27 2 What do we mean by meaning? 29 2.1 Overview 29 2.2 The boundaries of lexical semantics 29 2.3 The nature of denotative meaning 34 2.4 Are senses “images in the mind”? 37 2.5 Meaning and concepts 38 2.6 Summary and conclusions 39 2.7 Further reading 39 2.8 Answers to puzzles 40 2.9 Exercises 41 3 Components and prototypes 43 3.1 Overview 43 3.2 Senses as definitions: Classical Theory 43 3.3 An early componential approach – Katz 49 3.4 Against the classical approach: prototypes 51 3.5 Summary 54 3.6 Further reading 55 3.7 Answers to puzzles 55 3.8 Exercises 55 ix x Contents 4 Modern componential approaches – and some alternatives 58 4.1 Overview and questions 58 4.2 Jackendoff: Conceptual Semantics 59 4.3 Pustejovsky: the Generative Lexicon 66 4.4 Wierzbicka: Natural Semantic Metalanguage 69 4.5 Alternatives to componential approaches 73 4.6 Summary and conclusion 76 4.7 Further reading 77 4.8 Answers to puzzles 77 4.9 Exercises 78 Part II Relations among words and senses 81 5 Meaning variation: polysemy, homonymy, and vagueness 83 5.1 Overview 83 5.2 Polysemy, homonymy, vagueness 83 5.3 Meaning variation and language change 94 5.4 Approaches to polysemy 98 5.5 Summary and conclusion 104 5.6 Further reading 104 5.7 Answers to puzzles 105 5.8 Exercises 106 6 Lexical and semantic relations 108 6.1 Overview 108 6.2 Paradigmatic relations: synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy 108 6.3 Two approaches to relations and the lexicon 123 6.4 Summary and conclusion 129 6.5 Further reading 129 6.6 Answers to puzzles 129 6.7 Exercises 131 Part III Word classes and semantic types 133 7 Ontological categories and word classes 135 7.1 Overview 135 7.2 Ontological categories and semantic types 135 7.3 Word class prototypes 139 7.4 Ontological categories and lexical semantics: some conclusions 144 7.5 Further reading 145 7.6 Answers to puzzles 145 7.7 Exercises 146 8 Nouns and countability 148 8.1 Overview 148 8.2 Thinking about nouns and things 148 8.3 Nouns and number: grammar and semantics 151 8.4 Variation in countability: the Conceptual Semantics approach 155 Contents xi 8.5 Mass nouns as plurals 160 8.6 Cultural habits and countability: the NSM approach 162 8.7 Summary and conclusions 168 8.8 Further reading 168 8.9 Answers to puzzles 169 8.10 Exercises 170 9 Predication: verbs, events, and states 172 9.1 Overview 172 9.2 The semantics of verbs 172 9.3 States and events 179 9.4 Motion verbs 180 9.5 Non-verb predicates 190 9.6 Summary and conclusion 195 9.7 Further reading 196 9.8 Answers to puzzles 196 9.9 Exercises 199 10 Verbs and time 201 10.1 Overview 201 10.2 Tense, aspect, and Aktionsart 201 10.3 Aktionsart categories 203 10.4 Vendler classes 210 10.5 Boundedness and telicity 211 10.6 Semantic relations among verbs 214 10.7 Summary and conclusion 217 10.8 Further reading 217 10.9 Answers to puzzles 218 10.10 Exercises 219 11 Adjectives and properties 222 11.1 Overview 222 11.2 Adjectives and the nouns they modify 222 11.3 Absolute adjectives 224 11.4 Gradable adjectives and semantic scales 227 11.5 Properties of scales and types of scalar adjectives 230 11.6 Summary and conclusion 239 11.7 Further reading 239 11.8 Answers to puzzles 240 11.9 Exercises 242 References 243 Index 250 List of figures 3.1 Experimental stimuli in the style of Labov (1973) page 52 4.1 Lexical information about pea 60 4.2 Lexical meanings within (9) 64 4.3 Typical and atypical birds (Jackendoff 1983:144) 65 4.4 Image schemas for in 75 5.1 Types of meaning variation 91 5.2 Continuum of meaning variation 93 5.3 Partial polysemy network for crawl 103 6.1 A partial taxonomy of food, particularly cheese 114 6.2 Age/sex taxonomy for person categories 118 6.3 Height scale (preliminary version) 120 6.4 Componential approach to semantic relations 125 6.5 Field representation for selected verbs of human locomotion 126 6.6 Lexical blocking 128 6.7 Lexical field for color terminology 131 7.1 Hoffman and Rosenkrantz’s ontological system 137 8.1 The unboundedness of plural teapots 153 8.2 The pl operation